Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom smashes together Super Mario 64, Katamari Damacy, and Crazy Taxi to create the wildest platformer I've ever played

A while back I wrote about the wonderful slick movement in Penny's Big Breakaway, how all the dips and curves allowed for smooth and elegant player expression. Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is also an (ahem) vehicle for player expression in a 3D platformer, that's also all about using level geometry to its fullest. Except here you take your colorful little cab, hit the boosters and ram into sharp angles at top speed to fling your transportation hero high into the sky at velocities that can feel almost game breaking.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, from developer Panik Arcade, shares a similar philosophy to some of the 3D platforming greats. As a player, you're in control of your movement, and able to feel like you're taking advantage of the space to power through on your own terms to meet tricky challenges. But by having you smash headlong into solving those problems, even from the earliest stages, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is upfront about its tongue-in-cheek, joyous brashness.

Pedal to the metal

Playing early levels for the first time, you feel a little unsure about how to best make it through. Your taxi's moveset is, for the most part, quite stripped back and simple. You accelerate forwards, able to drift a little as you turn corners, and complete jumps by hitting a boost – which has you pause for a moment as a clockwork engine twists – shooting you forwards and into the air.

Quickly, you learn that you don't just need to fling yourself off simple ramps. Pretty much any angled surface, once you hit at speed, will send you soaring relative to its steepness like you're blasting into a pinball bumper. And, you learn, you can stall out your own boost to flip your car over, trading forward momentum for an extra hop into the air and improved maneuverability. It can almost feel game breaking at first until you realize later devious challenges are often built around having you exploit this in mind.

At the same time, though, there's the sense as you explore each vibrant level – everything is super colorful like a cross between Super Mario 64 and Katamari Damcy – that the developers aren't quite sure how far players will be able to break the movement, yet are extremely okay with letting you loose to try your best. Each level has you tracking down cogs to progress in an overworld – traditional collectathon stuff – and on my first go around initial stages there were quite a few that felt impossible to reach. It's not until going back to them, having learnt to master some of the almost game-breaking-feeling controls, that I learn just how much power you have to really toss the taxi all over the maps.

As you unravel the unique platforming mechanics, the world also feels increasingly off-kilter. Nothing about Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is serious in the least, whether it's your mechanic creator Morio who shows you the ropes, to your quest to take down Alien Mosk with his evil extraterrestrial, hyper-corpo approach to automobiles. Levels range from strange arcades made up of twisting pipes, to Crazy Taxi-style timed challenges through somewhat more urban-style levels such as a whole town that revolves around pizza. Before you know it you're jumping around skyscrapers and castles, infiltrating secret bases, and dodging laser beams from dreamlike entities.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is obviously made with a lot of love for 3D platforming classics, but it's in knowing all the expectations that Panik Arcade is able to set about breaking them apart one by one. With its hybrid of driving mechanics and willingness to allow you to use level geometry to rip through jumping challenges, and its bizarre off-kilter tone, there's really no other game like it, let alone another platformer. If you love platformers, and especially ones willing to get playful and inventive with their movement mechanics, this is one game you need to hail immediately. Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is out now on PC.

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